A study by Mitchell and Martin (1997) on secondary school children learning French in the UK found that the children “who did not internalise and retain a corpus of phrases of this kind, at this early stage, were highly unlikely to make any real progress subsequently, and in particular were never seen to move on from pragmatic communication strategies to grammatical control”.

Other people manage the tension of oncoming defeat by ranting and raving at the screen; me, I prefer to internalise all that emotion until the suppressed screams are coursing around my bloodstream, the adrenaline in my mouth tastes of almonds, and I'm clutching at my chest like someone in the throes of the Five Pointed Palm Exploding Heart Technique.